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well, while we dont necessarily agree on the current situation, i can respect the principle you speak from.
however I would submit to you that the Cold War was actually a pretty hot war and that it was necessary and it was a fight for our very existance....
I would also suggest that Desert Storm was an unavoidable conflict that very much was in keeping with the idea of war to deal with direct evil.
I wont get into recent conflicts. I respect your view on that even though we arent on the same page....
I do very much agree that empires fall.... and they generally fall when they are forced into one expensive conflict after another...
we just may have reached the same conclusion from two very different starting points...
Even though we disagree on this topic you deserve a rep point, because it's quite refreshing that while we may disagree there are no insults exchanged. Make no mistake, I don't disrespect military personnel. However; I do oppose the policies that put them there. As for empires falling... I don't want the United States to repeat the same mistakes that other empires have made. We have got to start learning from history, or we're doomed to repeat it. We can still be a great nation, have a powerful military, and not have to constantly get involved in trying to solve everybody elses problems.
What about the manipulation by organizations with ulterior motives?
We've seen that terrorist org's. aren't always the dumbest herder in the cave.
How about infiltrating various mid-east countries and fomenting something like an "Arab spring" for the sole purpose of destabilizing regimes that have not acquiesced to full "brotherhood" subserviance? Is that a possibility?
"Let's go in there and stir the pot into a full blown rebellion KNOWING we can draw the West (U.S.) into another entangled mess where they make weapons and material available to us, even getting involved themselves, which furthers our ambitons of destabilizing a country, leaving a power vacuum we can then expropriate to make inroads into running the place ourselves."
Your willingness to involve yourselves in these things is now routine and predictable. THEY are counting upon it and manipuating you.
Kerry is an ass for playing into their hands with his one sided characterization of the use of "chemical weapons".
The U.K. and France are jumping at the bit to reclaim some semblance of "faded glory" while their countries are floundering in a quagmire of negative immigrant cultural influence.
You have to remember that many posters on here that decry the Iraq war are too young to remember GWI. The situation in Iraq in the late 90s and Syria today are very similar. Saddam was brutal, and had killed even more of his own people than have died in Syria's civil war. Yet the very people that now are most outraged about our involvement in Iraq are the very bleeding hearts that support intervention in Syria.
IMO...the main reason for our involvement in Iraq was only peripherally related to the suffering of the Iraqi people, or WMDs. The main reason was rage over 9/11. We (and I include myself) were not satisfied that dropping some bombs in the Tora Bora mountains was sufficient response to that horrific attack. To the brutal murder of 3000 of our citizens, friends and neighbors. Saddam was a known bad guy, lets go whack him. 20/20 hindsight, was that a smart decision? No.
I disagree with picking sides in a civil war, even if one side has a really not nice guy as it's leader. Even if the people of that country are being mistreated. Sacrificing the lives of American servicemen...isn't worth it. We aren't the world's cops, and can't fix the world's problems. People have to take responsibility for their own futures and well being, without our intervention.
I could fall off my chair--I actually agree with you on some of this, particularly the really dumb motivation we had to go to war in Iraq the second time--it WAS all about revenge, but we directed that revenge on the wrong target.
Here's where you're wrong. Some here are bleeding hearts about Iraq because they think we should never take military action, and others think we need to be smart about it. We went after Iraq during the first invasion under George HW Bush because of WMD's. Iraq had invaded Kuwait, they had an active biological and chemical warfare program that they were using against the Kurds, and we went in and destroyed their infrastructure to stop them. Iraq's behavior was destabilizing the entire middle east, and it was the right thing to do. During the second Iraq war, we claimed that Iraq was again producing WMDs, but no proof was found.
Now we have a situation where Syria is not only developing WMD's, but actively using them. Again, it makes sense to go in and bomb their infrastructure to stop them. If Syria starts attacking other Middle Eastern nations, it becomes our problem really quickly if you want $10/gallon gas.
You will have to excuse me Ferd, but I oppose all war unless there is a direct threat to our sovereignty. I've never bought into the "we have to fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here mentality." And given the circumstances with this country, it's time we focus on and fix our own house instead of trying to clean up the mess of others. Not to mention, we're becoming too much like an empire, and history shows that ALL empires fall. Sometimes very hard.
We are an empire and the collapse has already started.
I could fall off my chair--I actually agree with you on some of this, particularly the really dumb motivation we had to go to war in Iraq the second time--it WAS all about revenge, but we directed that revenge on the wrong target.
Here's where you're wrong. Some here are bleeding hearts about Iraq because they think we should never take military action, and others think we need to be smart about it. We went after Iraq during the first invasion under George HW Bush because of WMD's. Iraq had invaded Kuwait, they had an active biological and chemical warfare program that they were using against the Kurds, and we went in and destroyed their infrastructure to stop them. Iraq's behavior was destabilizing the entire middle east, and it was the right thing to do. During the second Iraq war, we claimed that Iraq was again producing WMDs, but no proof was found.
Now we have a situation where Syria is not only developing WMD's, but actively using them. Again, it makes sense to go in and bomb their infrastructure to stop them. If Syria starts attacking other Middle Eastern nations, it becomes our problem really quickly if you want $10/gallon gas.
IMO, the presence of WMDs in Iraq had little to do with GW-I. Saddam had gas agents and had been using them for years, both against the Kurds, as well as against Iran. We did nothing about it. We (and the international community) didn't get involved until the invasion of Kuwait, and the associated threat to Saudi Arabia. More specifically, to their oil resources and production facilities. We also did relatively little in the aftermath to ensure that WMD production facilities were indeed destroyed. We did very little about Saddam's continuing attacks and repression of the Kurds in the aftermath of GW-I. In short, while it stayed an internal matter, verging on a civil war, we didn't get involved. This continued for ~12 years. It was only after 9/11, when our vulnerability to terrorist attacks, including WMDs, was recognized, that we took a more active interest.
We should do the same this time. What happens within Syria, among Syrians, isn't our problem, let alone our responsibility. Perhaps, should their turmoil spill over to countries that are actually friendly to us, we could give them some support. But even that is questionable. At what point is it worth the lives of American servicemen? IMO...unless they attack us or capture/kill our citizens, it isn't our problem.
How many people would you have us kill, and would you have a terrorist organization in power in Syria, in order to destroy their WMD production facilities? Weapons that have never been used against us, or our allies.
Last edited by Toyman at Jewel Lake; 08-28-2013 at 02:45 PM..
WMD was the reason used and why we went in.
Bush and company are War Criminals.
Not true on both counts. If you listened to G.W. Bush's speeches in the months before the war, you would realize that he mentioned liberating Iraq more often than WMD.
And it's not "criminal" to enforce the Cease Fire agreement with Iraq. And resolution 1441.
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